Arches NP

I am covering two days with this post. I could not get logged into the motel WiFi for unknown reasons yesterday. My intention was to go into Moab and although I did not actually go into the town of Moab, I spent much of the day exploring the area before starting for Idaho. I took a look at Canyon Lands NP which seems to be a smaller version of the Grand Canyon. I spent only an hour or so there before starting for the Arches NP. Arches is only a few miles down the road and about 4 miles from Moab.

I considered my stop there to be more of a scouting trip. My tripod was packed too deep for me to get to, and wearing motorcycle boots limited my trail hiking distances. I happen to meet a guy who is a teacher from the Rochester area called Ed. Ed's mother who is in her 70s has an RV and he takes her during his summer break across the country. He was also interested in taking pictures so we tended to hit the same spots for photos. It was good to have some company for conversation while trecking to photographic spots. Here are some of the photos, they are part of an HDR (high dynamic range) file, which you take a series of different exposures and combine them to give a photo with a higher dynamic range. But since I do not have HDR software in this laptop, they have been photoshoped for exposure. The one on the bottom left looks like an old man's face to me. That is one of the things about Arches NP is so many of the rock formations look like something.

The nobleman is that center rock looking to the left. This is coming into the area they call the windows for the two arches there. I did not try to photograph these arches as they were crawling with tourist. I did take one of the above photos at another set of arches across from the windows. There I could use the foliage to hide the tourist.

This video is leaving the park, trying to show some of the features and of the mountains in the distance.

Another video showing the features and sights of Arches NP. This next video is in Canyon Lands and it is basically a ride through a twisty road in the park. I will note that the tires I am running hold the road real well except for those darn road snakes. Bike likes to slip on those, and on some tighter turns, they have lots of road snakes.

After spending the day at these two National Parks I noticed something hot about my face, I had let it get mildly sunburned. I checked the weather on my phone and saw a lot of storms popping up to my south, where Moab is, and a huge cell to the west running up to where I was headed. So I decided to skip Moab and try to beat out the storms. I did run into the tail end of a thunderstorm and the rain was light. The storm only threw out one bolt of lightening that I saw, and I was through it quickly. I got onto I 80 and ran parallel to a large lightening throwing storm just to my south. I tried to video tape it, but I didn't get any good lightening shots. After turning off the camera, there were three big bolts within 30 seconds. Missed them. As I was paralleling this storm I could see I was headed towards the monster, but if It's track held true to what I saw on my phone, I would be paralleling it too when I turned north on RT 191 / 6. Sure enough I was able to parallel it, and only hit a few light pockets of rain.

I'll note that it was in the mid 90s all day, but where the storms went through it got mighty cool. At one point going up into a higher elevation out of the canyon it dropped to 64. That is getting a cool on a bike after 90s. Part of this route had signs all over warning of deer migration route. They started out at "next 37 miles" and wound down as the miles did. I did not see a single deer the whole way until I reached the town's edge, and there was a doe just hanging out beside the road.

My objective of today was simply to get to Ken and CJ's home. I did the slab to the tune of about 400 miles and arrived no problem. We will be doing small things the next few days, and I don't know if there will be any day rides. Ken has other company, Eric who is a missionary in Nicaragua. Eric flies out Wednesday, and Rene' flies in Friday.